Silent Night
by Usorokoaemo
Summary: A oneshot fiction that records what is really a long monologue by Erik following the incident in the lair at the end of the story. Erik reflects upon the effect of Christine's decision. The story follows up to Erik's death.


Silent Night

_A/N: This story is based on a random mix of Kay, Leroux, and ALW. Mostly Kay with a few Kay quotes and one Leroux spattered in there for good measure. It records the happenings after the incident in the lair up to Erik's death in a monologue-type format._

_I think I had a random outburst of angst after spending so much time writing humor stories. >>;_

I'd known vaguely from the moment she'd left me that nights would no longer be a comfort to me. I'd thought I'd known as I turned her away, floundering like a fish out of water under the appalling weight of the conscience I'd sought to destroy, the extent to which I would be changed. And when she enfolded the ring, the symbol of our unbroken vow, within my hand, I believed I could foresee my future…or lack of one. I had known I would die. But I had not known exactly what it meant to regain ones conscience after decades of existence as a living-dead man. I had not known true anguish until that first night after the incident in the house across the lake.

I woke to dark.

Nightmares-waking breathless and weeping- I have known. Illness-tossing, and sweating, and moaning- I have known. But darkness as the epitome of utter emptiness… _that_ I have not known.

That first night I opened my eyes to the night as I had never seen the night before. The shadows did not welcome me nor I them. And in the deathly stillness I realized…I was _afraid._

No longer was I the omnipotent Phantom that swept like the Angel of Doom into the dark embrace of the night. I could no longer belong to the dark. I could not go back. I had become a mere mortal, a child that wakes into the loneliness of dark and weeps because he does not understand it. And then I realized that there was no place for me. Where once I had gained refuge from the condemnation of the world I found no peace. Heaven had never wanted me. Now, in one fell swoop, I had been denied Hell as well.

_You lied to me, Sir…Why did you lie?_

I really was a ghost. Caught between Heaven and Hell I was cursed to roam the endless corridors of an empty soul. For once in my solitary life, I yearned for day.

Damn that child! Damn her and her childish faith in a false Angel! Damn her pity and her love! And damn her eyes! Those beautiful clear eyes that had shone so brightly with her innocence and what she had thought was love. Oh, God, oh Satan…

I awoke because sleep had been torn from me by an earthly noise. A sound so deafening that it had torn me from her arms where I'd slept peacefully unaware of reality. Unaware of rational thought and the moral institutions that I'd so suddenly fallen victim to in those last moments underneath the Opera House. I awoke and listened for the sound I'd heard which had not been a sound at all but a lack of one that had shaken me from a brief interlude in Heaven. I awoke to silence.

_Inside_.

There was nothing inside of me. The harmony, the rhythm, that link to another world I'd channeled for so long had simply ceased to be. I opened my mouth to sing but I might as well have been deaf and dumb. What issued forth from my throat was not music at all but the primal wailing of an animal: a mere beast mourning its trivial earthly trials.

I'd always had the music inside of me, rippling and heaving like a burning darkling sea. And when I had needed it, I had always found it. I may have been a demon but at least inside there had always been a light, a liquid fire that lit a path for me even in the deepest depths of Hell. Now that burning light was gone. Not just put out, but completely and utterly annihilated. I was as empty and as soulless as the sky if all the stars had fallen.

_Silence_.

A word I had never fully grasped the meaning of until now. I will not lie to you. I cannot lie to you. I wept. But the fear, the fear of nonexistence in a way I had never thought possible loomed up once more. And suddenly, for the first time in decades, I was swept up by the purely human impulse to resist my inevitable nonbeing. My mind fell victim to the primitive desires of my inner need to live. To survive. To leave a part of me behind before the last grain of sand trickled away.

The impulse was so strong that it rocketed me up and, like a misshapen puppet, I was drawn as if by invisible strings, stumbling and tripping, over to my organ. There the strings disappeared and my limbs, denied of all strength, sent me lurching at the abused instrument. Falling to the bench I found my fingers, of their own accord, seeking the polished keys in a desperate attempt to snatch at a broken immortality. At the power they had once known.

But the only sound those accursed pipes made was a ghastly noise that was devoid of all emotion. The tune my fingers plucked was familiar but so completely dead that I could not have named the tune had my life depended on it; even had _her_ life depended on it. I dared not even think her name.

_Her_. Unbidden, she sprang to my mind in an image so vivid I could have sworn I could have reached out and touched her. In fact, I think I _did_ attempt to reach out and touch her. I failed, of course.

She had been beautiful. She still was. Golden locks, pale porcelain skin born of the Opera life, and a body blossoming with the vitality of youth. Involuntarily, I groaned. Even as a ghost in my mind she filled me with want. With _need._ But the true key to my downfall, and to hers, had been her voice. No, not simply her voice which on its own had been just as dead inside as I was now, but the combined power of her voice and mine. The child born of her voice and my genius had been too powerful for the both of us. Our union had damned us both. Her to Hell and me to …to whatever lies below Hell.

I had never been the Angel of Music. I had always known this even in the midst of my delusions. She would know forever because of one thoughtless moment on my part that angels do not exist. No, I lie. There is a God-He has forsaken me. And there has always been an Angel of Music for her. But she had never known herself for an angel.

My inhibitions faltered, weakened by thoughts of my Angel. Against my better judgment I allowed myself to escape from the cold emptiness into the shelter of my memories of her. Dreams of a child lulled into sweet slumber by the thought of me. Thoughts of an innocent girl lured with wide-eyed innocence by the subtle caress of my song.

Caught in the warm safety of my reflections I dared consider the unthinkable. In those final desperate moments… in that dance of life and death, what if I had conquered? What if she had followed me willingly into my world of candlelight and music? What if she had run to the embrace of the Music of the Night of her own accord? What, I asked myself, if Don Juan had triumphed?

Then I would not have been there alone sitting in solitary confinement in a night that never ended. I would have been with her. God, dare I consider it? _In_ her. In _Christine_.

_Hell!_

Against my will my mouth fell open and her name burst forth.

"Christine.." the name escaped from my lips as music. As a painful, brilliant melody that scorched my throat and left my mouth utterly dry in the aftermath of her passing.

And then, as if I'd unwittingly tripped some unseen trigger, I could not stop whispering that name. I could not stop singing. The music was still there after all.

_I will sing that name until I die_, I thought to myself with a twisted sneer at my own cliché.

"Oh, Christine…Christine….I would have left everything for you."

And I would have. My home. My domain. She was my _Magnum opus_. My triumph. Heaven and Hell would have been reduced to mere restraints. We would have transcended mortality and morality and **immortality**, my Angel and I.

"Christine…Christine…" The name alone sent me reeling with passion and lust and jealousy and rage and hatred and _love._

More than just love. I had known love. I had _loved_ architecture. I had _loved_ music. At first, I had loved her. Now I was overflowing with something so far beyond love that I could not name it. More than obsession it burned with both a black rage and an unadulterated adulation. I wanted to strangle her and hold her. I wanted to kill her and _kiss_ her.

_Such a little thing really, a kiss…_

I hated her for reducing me to what I was:

_I had become no more…than a poor dog ready to die for her._

I had once held the world in the palm of a single hand. Held it captive like a helpless virgin; all mine to consume. I'd dined with kings and ministers. I'd lassoed myself the power of all of Persia. I'd erected monuments and composed movements and felled idols. I had been a god. Feared and revered until a single simple-minded child came to me.

A single kiss and I had collapsed at her feet no longer a god, no longer even a man. A dog. A poor wretched dog. It was sickening. It was perverse. It was obsene. Don Juan felled by a little girl.

The irony of it nearly stopped my heart. I winced as a sharp pain shot through my left arm. The wince became an open mouthed gasp as the pain hit my chest.

_Mortality_.

The memory of a small frightened child whirled up among the waves of pain. Anger. The cold floor. A Persian Cat Basket. Oh, what farce! A charade upon us both!

Even as I had lain there helpless and knowing I was dying I'd striven desperately to protect her. I knew then that for every drop of hate dripped like poison into my veins, there was an equal amount of love for her. And with that I began to comprehend why I was doomed.

No man could have ever born the pain of having his muse, his very soul ripped away. She had been my inspiration, the music that had fueled my life. She might have even loved me.

In the pressing dark my hand sought the keys to my organ one last time and the notes rolled off so sweetly I imagined I could see them dancing like silver before my eyes.

_Or maybe,_ I thought grimly, _I am going mad._

I did not find time to consider the irony of that thought because suddenly words burst into my head like sunlight breaking through a cloud.

_Think of me waking silent and resigned  
__Imagine me trying too hard to put you from my mind_

Words in the voice of my Angel. A final plea.

_Promise me…_

It's been almost three weeks since that silent night broken so suddenly by music. My reign (if you could even call it that) over this miserable underground kingdom will soon be at an end. Christine, do not weep for me. I am no longer worth your tears, broken creature that I am.

But remember, Christine, will you? Remember your Angel. When you wake up weeping to a cold and silent night, _think of me…_

Your Angel will be there. I broke it once and I will do it again. I will break your Silence.

_A/N: So suddenly around 11:00 pm or so I was gripped by the urge to write. Out of no where this suddenly spewed out like an alien had exploded out of my chest or something. I'd been thinking about this story inthe back of my mind for a while but I wasn't aware that I'd fall into 'labor' with it so suddenly._

_Because of the late hour and the frantic pace, it was written kind of haphazardly. Since I'm leaving for China and then New York I had to get it out before I left. Whew._


End file.
